Orpheus & Eurydice : a lyric sequence / Gregory Orr.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Orr, Gregory.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Orpheus (Greek mythological character)--Poetry.

Orpheus.

Orpheus (Greek mythological character).

Eurydice (Greek mythological character)--Poetry.

Eurydice.

Eurydice (Greek mythological character).

Genre:

Poetry.

Physical Description:

vi, 51 pages ; 21 cm

Other Title:

Orpheus and Eurydice

Place of Publication:

Port Townsend, Wash. : Copper Canyon Press, [2001]

Summary:

"How can I celebrate love/ now that I know what it does?" So begins this booklength lyric sequence which reinhabits and modernizes the story of Orpheus, the mythic master of the lyre (and father of lyric poetry) and Eurydice, his lover who died and whom Orpheus tried to rescue from Hades.

Gregory Orr uses as his touchstone the assertion that myths attempt to narrate a whole human experience, while at the same time serving a purpose which resists explanation. Through poems of passionate and obsessive erotic love, Orr has dramatized the anguished intersection of infinite longings and finite lives and, in the process, explores the very sources of poetry.

Contents:

The Entrance to the Underworld

When I first saw... 5

Is this what... 6

We've come... 7

In the Meadow... 8

In my dream... 10

A snake... 11

His Lament 12

Loss... 13

If...

When I was alive... 17

She paused... 18

Orpheus Descending 19

I was moving... 21

When Eurydice saw him 22

Look, they descend 23

Orpheus stood in the dark...

The Ghosts Listen to Orpheus Sing 27

My body was never marred 29

Because I sensed 31

It hurt me to hear... 33

When they said... 34

In the cave mouth... 35

Once the two of us 36

It's winter...

In the shadows... 41

His Grief 43

Far below, plowed fields... 44

The Wedge 45

The Maenads 47

Warned his song... 48

By the Shore 49

His Dream: The Black Tree/Thirst 50

Tomb of Orpheus 51

Fields took on....

ISBN:

1556591519

OCLC:

44573327